by Saurav Jha
Travelling is an added feature in this old model of brokers’ hard sell. I remember, long before everything went online, my father had been sold Reliance shares by a broker who did his business practically door to door.
Outside the window, there are deep leafy groves on either side of the road. A group of spotted deer frolic at the edges. When the bus passes by, they draw back and stand still.
‘Our family – we are kanskaars by caste,’ Jignes volunteers. ‘Traditionally, we work with bronze. We have a small family shop. But nowadays it’s not enough to stick to the old trades. One needs new avenues. I am slowly getting into futures trading – very exciting. Perhaps I can specialize in metal later. It’s in my blood after all. Lot of money in that.’ His eyes twinkle. Then he comes back to what we had been talking about. ‘My wife is very intelligent,’ he says, now comfortable with the subject. ‘Got first class in graduation. Commerce.’
Lightly, I say, just as a talking point, ‘Oh, then, perhaps you are waiting for the twins to grow up, so she can also start working?’
Jignes starts. His prominent Adam’s apple bobs twice. Then he replies, lips stretched in a smile, ‘If I suggest something like that, you know what my father will say? Have we men died that the daughter-in-law has to get a job outside? We are alive still and can fulfil all her requirements.’
My neighbour to the right changes the subject and begins to talk about one Bajrangdas Bapa of Bhavnagar. Have we heard of him? This is perhaps something of a colloquial habit across India, where some local guru or pir is randomly introduced into a conversation, followed immediately by a great deal of exclamation over the fact that we have not heard of this guru in the first place. (‘You must have heard about Neki Mohammad-ji?’ Polly’s mother had asked. ‘His name is known in Delhi also.’)
I follow D’s eyes to the front of the bus, and through the giant windshield we can see a peacock crossing the road regally, his plume trailing majestically on the road. The driver stops the bus and waits for the bird to cross.
Late afternoon, and the sun, much less potent, is now streaming in through Jignes’s window with the ripeness reserved for the last daylight hour. He sits with his back to the sunshine, so his face is dark. Many people have got off on the way, and the bus, now literally lighter, is streaming along the smooth roads. We have talked in short bursts for almost the entire duration of the journey. In Jignes’s opinion (he has an opinion on everything and I listen quietly, without interfering), the riots in Ahmedabad happened because the Muslims were doing well in business, so jealousy was rife. That jealousy was fatally misdirected. I do not make any comment. Jignes is not one to stick with any topic. He jumps from idea to idea, from place to place. The weather. The government. Travel. Food. Healthcare. But now that we are nearing Sanchore, he and I are both a little tired. For a quarter of an hour, we sit in silence.
‘Are you carrying alcohol, sir?’
‘No,’ I reply.
‘Of course, as a visitor in Gujarat, you are allowed to carry alcohol. But you have to register at the police station.’
‘Right,’ I say, ‘but we’re not carrying any alcohol.’
When, with a renewed roar, the bus crosses the Luni, I open my eyes. The river bed is almost dry and through the vast sandy stretches, a thin stream trickles singly. I shut my eyes again.
‘Are you two married?’
I open my eyes and see D’s face turned towards Jignes.
‘Yes.’ We both nod.
‘Because the thing is, this Banaskantha district is quite dangerous for couples.’ He lowers his voice theatrically. ‘My friend was in a hotel in this area. It seemed like a good hotel, marble and stuff. But there were hidden cameras in the room. They had no idea obviously.’ (He shifts from ‘he’ to ‘they’ without any explanation.) ‘Everything was recorded. The next day the hotel people started blackmailing them. Finally, my friend had to pay one peti to get the reel back. That is why I’m telling you in advance. Do be careful.’
D immediately begins to scribble in her yellow notebook.
‘Anything you need in Gujarat, any problem you have – though I’m sure there will be none – don’t hesitate to call me. Because I tour so much, I have friends everywhere.’ He gives me his card. The bus enters a bustling town area – and I guess the depot must be near. In any case, Jignes is going to get off in a few minutes. He has an arrangement with a hotel here – whenever he comes to Sanchore, this is where he puts up. We exchange a few final pleasantries. The man next to me has been carefully listening all the while, though he never joined the conversation, except that once, when he brought up Bajrang Bapa of Bhavnagar. He shakes my hand too though he is not going anywhere. Before disembarking, Jignes dangles his overnight bag and tells D, who’s still writing, ‘Madam, do think of my twins and family. Don’t put me in some most wanted list or something!’ Everyone laughs. He joins the queue to alight, his phone rings again, his gait becomes jaunty. ‘Bolo,’ he says. ‘Oh Sir-ji? Hello-ji. I have just reached Sanchore. I shall come to your shop straightaway. Yes, yes, of course I’ve got the papers with me.’
As soon as Jignes is gone, the man next to me says urgently, ‘My wife is a schoolteacher. One daughter is studying to be a CA, one daughter for the IAS, son in class twelve.’ With the corner of his eye, he checks if D’s scribbled that too. After that, he lapses into a genial silence once again.
I look outside. Jignes Goradia has disappeared into one of the hundreds of lanes, in one of the thousands of small towns in the country: marked by their billboards, rasping twilights, unevenly tarred streets, young men and old men standing in verandahs, with their elbows on the railings and eyes on the roads, girls walking past in twos. It has always wrenched me, these small-town dusks. At the back of my mind are two spools of photographs I know intimately but have no wish to sift through again. Dhanbad, my mother’s hometown, where my grandparents lived, and where I had a few of the comforts of childhood – a jungly overgrown garden, long hot afternoons spent on a sofa, poring over colonial books filled with animals, to the sound of my mother and aunts laughing in low voices. And there was Jamshedpur, the place where we had a holiday home by the brown Kharkai. The house where my mother was happiest. After she died, we could not face going back there, so the flat was sold off. My grandfather’s house in Dhanbad was anyway a government bungalow, meant to be returned to the institute – though it still stands on the ISM campus. Both places have been lost to me. But there is something about dusk in small towns, with their extenuating fear of both failure and success, which makes me feel darkly sentimental.
The bus has finally pulled into the depot. D has stood up and is already pulling our bags down from the overhead racks. Familiar noises stream in from outside. ‘Looloolooloo,’ she chants.
‘We ought to grab a bite before taking the next bus,’ I tell her, though the scent of dusk in the head is not easy to shake off. ‘Those gobi parathas disappeared into the pit of my stomach long ago.’
‘Flower parathas, you mean,’ she corrects me.
This is Sanchore. At the border between Gujarat and Rajasthan. From here we have to go to Deesa.
‘Deesa, Deesa, Deesa, Deesa,’ a conductor screams on cue from a bus at the other end of the depot, but we are too tired to rush right away. That one’s already too full. I stand beside one of the kirana shops, with rows and rows of Lays and Kurkure gleaming in their bright packs. The evening is pleasantly warm. Stars have already begun to appear in the mauve sky, though darkness is yet to fall. D tugs off her jacket and walks towards the toilets. I buy a bottle of water and wonder what we should eat, what we should do. Jignes suggested we stay the night in Deesa. He’d even suggested a hotel (without cameras apparently) – but I would rather go on to Palanpur, and find a hotel there.
By the time D returns from the loo, looking horrified as usual, I have one bit of trivia ready for her. ‘Do you know who lived in Deesa for a while and even
wrote about it?’
‘Who?’ she asks, lifting her bag on her shoulders, shuddering slightly at the imaginary smells she thinks she may have dragged along.
‘Richard Burton,’ I offer humbly.
‘Really? That is, the explorer Burton?’
‘Oh no. Liz Hurley’s husband, Burton. Of course, yes, the explorer. There was a base of the Bombay Army of the East India Company in Deesa. Richard Francis Burton was posted here and conducted many of his travels in Sind and Gujarat from this base.’
‘Huh,’ she says, ‘who would have known that?’
29
By some stroke of luck, there appears, at half past seven in Sanchore, a long-distance Volvo lookalike that is going to Ahmedabad. It will go via Deesa and Palanpur, the driver informs us gruffly, because we are badgering him at his window while other buses rev their engines threateningly around us. We rush round to the other side, and get into the bus, arguing about whether we ought to spend the night at Deesa – both Burton and Goradia add up in favour of Deesa – or go on to Palanpur, at Saurav’s insistence, simply because it’s in Gujarat, meaning we’ll be finally done with Rajasthan. ‘So you want to get there for purely psychological reasons?’ I ask, dumbfounded. ‘We have no idea which hotels might be available within our budget in Palanpur!’
However, the discussion remains inconclusive because once we’re in the bus, we’re slightly stumped. The seating arrangement is unlike any we’ve seen so far. On the left, there are a few regular front-facing rows with two seats each, all of them occupied, followed by one long side-facing bench. It is reminiscent of a few public buses in Calcutta that I used to take to college, before the low-floor JNNURM buses came to India. No. 240. Or 3C/2. There are luggage racks above these. To the right, however, are twin seats facing each other, and above, medium-sized bunks. It’s what is called a sleeper coach (though if one were to be particular, this is only half a sleeper coach) and on other days, it might do an overnight journey from Ahmedabad to Junagadh. We find ourselves seats on the side-facing bench, and almost instantaneously, as the bus rumbles through the night, the people around – and above us – absorb us into their conversation. It begins with the question of exactly what we do for a living. After certain premises of that uncertain business have been established, they ask the particulars of salary one might receive from such ventures.
The men sitting around us are Gujarati petit bourgeoisie. They are immediately ready to share details themselves. One is a trader in potatoes, another supplies rice, a third is in the cloth business. They live on the outskirts of Ahmedabad and travel regularly to Barmer, even as far as Kheteshwar, on business. They are friendly and curious – and for those who do not read, what better way to pass the time travelling than conversation?
The rice trader, a small man with closely cropped hair and a butterfly moustache, remarks, ‘We as a state have developed quite a lot. You know our CM? Narendra Modi-ji? He’s the lion of Gujarat. One day, he will be lion of India.’ He realizes that we are listening intently, and perhaps he is unsure of what the concentration writ on our features signifies. A gentle shadow flits across his face and he smiles sweetly. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘Rahul Gandhi is also coming up in a big way, showing a lot of promise.’
And here we encounter, perhaps, one of the most important traits that distinguishes the Indian mind from others: this tendency to be a pleaser when it does not cost anything. The rice trader votes for Modi, believes in Modi. But because he thinks that we might have a different political affiliation, he effortlessly slips in this praise of Rahul Gandhi that he does not mean, and if we choose to act on it, the conversation will proceed along other lines. It is one of the instances of the complex Indian moral compass: there is no harm, they think, in saying something if it makes the other person feel better.
So, most of the time, the Indian will tell you exactly what you want to hear, often with a pinch of Bollywood masala and jargon. A large number of foreign correspondents realize this only later (and often they do not necessarily care; the ones they want to cast as victims will exaggerate their victimhood for that particular story; for another story, they will be brave and undeterred by circumstance, as required). But westerners who come to do business certainly care – and often they are maddened by this addictive doublespeak. A British colleague in my former company, who had lived and worked in Delhi for a bit, used to say that when he approached people for something, say, a sponsorship, or to make a sale, they never said no to his face. They would always speak in birdsong: it sounds interesting; perhaps we should meet when my father/brother/CFO is present and talk in greater detail; you must come to my Diwali party. It drove him up the wall. All he wanted was for them to say no, so that he did not waste any more time with them. Eventually, he returned to Reading and an Indian was hired instead. The Indian interpreted the birdsong well, and spoke it himself.
Of course, when S says, eyes glinting wickedly, ‘Ah yes, the promising yuvraj. We should have a coronation, no, for him?’ the rice trader looks a bit discomfited. He changes the subject and looks at me. ‘There are many decent hotels in Palanpur, madam. You will not have any problems. In fact, we will pass some hotels on this route only. You can get off at the doorstep.’
The man who has a cloth business and is sitting in one of the bunks upstairs is very interested to know about the places we have already covered, and the ones we hope to visit. ‘What did you not like about Rajasthan, madam?’ he asks me, and since he seems genuinely interested in an answer, I tell him the truth. ‘The condition of women,’ I say. ‘Dowry and child marriage are very deeply entrenched evils. How will they go?’
A young man sitting behind comes and sits in front, presumably to chat. He says, ‘But, madam, things have changed also. For example, my wife and my sister-in-law keep the gold they got at the wedding with themselves only, not with my mother, as it used to be in the past. You might consider the gold part of her dowry, but it is for herself only.’ Back and forth, back and forth, I argue gently. They respond with sincerity. But it is too tedious to report.
Afterwards, the man who has a cloth business tells me: ‘Madam, since you are writing a book, I would humbly urge you to put this in so that the public understands.’ Immediately, my yellow notebook and pen come out and I listen attentively. He raises his voice as though addressing a public rally. ‘Which sorts of insensitive fools have designed these iron ladders leading up to these bunks? How do they expect older people to climb up? Or ladies in saris? So tough. Or is it that they expect only young men will travel? Public awareness is required for these things, and only then will people design ladders that take senior citizens and ladies in saris into account.’ He returns to his normal voice: ‘Got it, madam?’
The bus stops at Deesa. We don’t get off, but a very large number of locals get in, men in turbans and women in bright saris with their heads covered. Some grab the remaining seats. Others squat in the corridor between the seats, jabbering all the while. They have a very short distance to cover, they are saying. The traders, meanwhile, are busy dissecting our caste identities. ‘Jha,’ says the potato wholesaler, ‘means Maithili Brahmin. Right? Then how come you are Bengali?’
‘There is a story behind this,’ S says. ‘In the twelfth century, Bengal came under the rule of the Senas. The Senas were Andhra Brahmins who had become kshatriyas. Before the Sena rulers, for a long time Bengal was ruled by the Pala dynasty. The Palas were Buddhists, and though they never discriminated against their Hindu subjects, during the Pala times, the Brahmins of Bengal embraced the agamic traditions, a point where it came quite close to Vajrayana Buddhism. When Vallal Sena’s mother passed away, he decided to do her last rites according to Vedic custom, thus symbolizing a reinjection of Vedic thought into the mainstream. Brahmins were brought in from two major centres of Vedic learning, Kanyakubja (or Kanauj) and Mithila. That is the time my ancestors would have migrated to Bengal.
‘It is this same wave
of migrations that would have brought my ancestors to Bengal from Kanauj. Kanauj by then was under the sway of the Delhi Sultanate after falling to Ghori in 1193. So the Brahmins of Kanauj migrated with a greater sense of permanence perhaps; they became the Mukhopadhyayas (mukhya “upadhyaya”, upadhyaya being an old Brahmin title) and Bandyopadhyayas and so on. Later, when they flourished under the British, the “jee” that was the honorific added in north India must have got tagged to their simplified names. The Maithili Brahmins, on the other hand, kept their original surnames, and though they adopted the land and the language at the same time as the others, they remained at the margins of Bengalihood. However, they also retained ties with the Jhas of Mithila to a greater or lesser extent. The Mukherjees and Banerjees who came of age at the turn of the century fashioned themselves as original Bengalis, certainly as original Bengali Brahmins. At some point, again during British times, several people across caste lines (including some of my ancestors) became Roys or Rays – Rai Bahadur and Rai Rayan were khitaabs awarded by the British to collaborators – and this was later suitably anglicized.’
The night has suddenly become very cold. Though we are so many in the bus, the beast doesn’t seem to be holding any heat in its belly. There is an elderly man sitting on the floor of the bus, in a red-and-yellow turban. ‘Brahmins,’ he now exhales loudly, ‘are rakshasas, I tell you. Rakshasas.’
Seven:
How to Find Old Friends in New Places
I had acquired a pair of shorts from Chandni for two rupees and a quarter. In those days, for the wise Bengali, there was an extremely useful institution called the ‘European Third’ that traversed everywhere in Bharat.
